The Nail Plate

The nail plate is mostly made of keratin, the same chemical substance that hair is made from. Keratin is a specia protein that creates the bulk of the nail plate. In nature, there are over 30 different types of keratin, ranging from very soft Hungarian down to extremly hard desert turtle shells and even rigid porcupine quills. Keratin is a very tough and flexible material well suited to withstand the rigors of the environment. Ancient peoples relied on their natural nails as tools as well as for protection. so their nails had to be tough and durable.

Collagen and keratin serve similar functions, but for differing parts of the body.

Collagen is the building or structural protein for skin, and keratin is the structural protein for nails.

Like all proteins, keratin is made of long chains or stands of amino acids (uh-MEE-noh acids), joined together like pearls on a microscopic necklace. A typical keratin stand contains btw 300 and 500 amino acids linked into a long chain. These since chains prefer to exist as loosely coiled strands. Almost two-thirds of the keratin found inside nail cells exist as extremly tiny, coiled strands. Dozens od these coiled strands stack neatly into tight bundles creative tiny fibers or fibrils of keratin. These fibrils can be seen only under the most powerful electron microscopes. At these extremly high magnifications they look like tiny whiskers embedded in a semisolid gel. All of this is encased in a clear sac to create a nail cell. These fibrous filaments are so narrow that a bundle of 2,000 would only be as thick as a single human hair. Even so, each fibril contains approximately half a million amino acid molecules, and each nail plate contains hundreds of millions of fibrils. Thats a lot of amino acids is each nail!

Did you know?
The fingernail plate is made of about 100 layers of dead, flattened keratin cells. Toenail is thicker and can have up to 150 layers. The nail plate is also often referred to as the natural nail.

Doug Schoon: Nail Structure and Product Chemistry